Mike Lindell, the founder of MyPillow and a loyal supporter of President Donald Trump, is denying claims that his company was hit by a ransomware attack and says the allegations are part of a political attack against him.
Straight Arrow News, a self-described unbiased news outlet founded by Republican megadonor Joe Ricketts, first reported Tuesday that the ransomware gang Play claimed to have stolen a wide range of personal and company information from MyPillow. The alleged stolen data includes “clients’ documents, budget, payroll, IDs, taxes, finance information.”
Play has threatened to leak the data online if MyPillow does not respond by Friday, Straight Arrow News reported, citing a blog post from the group.
Futurism notes that Play has carried out attacks in the U.S., Brazil, Argentina, Switzerland, and Germany, often targeting groups associated with governments. That would make Lindell a potential target for the group.
Lindell has been a vocal supporter of Trump since his first presidential campaign and served as a chair for Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign in Minnesota. After Trump lost that election, Lindell became one of the most prominent spreaders of the conspiracy theory that the election was stolen.
This also isn’t Lindell’s first cyber battle.
In 2021, he held what he called a “Cyber Symposium” to lay out his “evidence” that China hacked U.S. voting machines and changed votes in the 2020 election. He even offered $5 million through his “Prove Mike Wrong” challenge to any cybersecurity expert who could debunk his claims.
Robert Zeidman, a software engineer, submitted a report to Lindell explaining that his supposed evidence did not contain valid voting machine packet capture data that would show that votes were sent to Chinese servers. Zeidman never received his prize, so he filed an arbitration lawsuit in 2023, and a private arbitration panel eventually ruled in his favor. Last year, however, a federal appeals court ruled that Lindell did not have to pay the $5 million.
Still, Lindell remains tied up in other election-related litigation. Dominion Voting Systems has an ongoing defamation lawsuit against Lindell over his false claims about the 2020 election.
In a recent interview, Lindell said attacks against him have cost the MyPillow brand $400 million. He also said he plans to seek compensation from Trump’s $1.8 billion Justice Department “Anti-Weaponization Fund,” which was created through a settlement between Trump and the IRS.
Now, Lindell says the ransomware claims are yet another political attack amid his campaign for Minnesota Governor.
“Nobody’s asked us for any ransom,” he told Straight Arrow News on Wednesday.
“This is another hit job by outside sources because I’m running for governor,” Lindell said. “I guarantee it. We do not have any breaches in our data at all.”
It’s unclear how being falsely identified as a victim of a ransomware attack would work as a political hit job. MyPillow and Lindell’s campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Either way, we may only have to wait a couple of days to find out whether the breach actually happened.
READ MORE: MyPillow CEO’s Cyber Symposium Goes Down in Flames After His ‘Cyber Guy’ Admits It’s a Sham
